


Love is Not the End of the World

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Good Omens Fusion, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 06:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16470299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: For General Danvers Week, although I am no longer on tumblr, here is my offering: a General Danvers Good Omens AU, in which Alex is a louche demon driving a fancy car, Astra is a stuffy angel who likes jazz and bookshops, and Kara is the Antichrist who happens to have been raised by atheists to be the sort of polite young lady who holds doors for strangers at the market.  It's about a slow burn that literally takes millennia and finally comes to fruition at what might be the end of the world.





	Love is Not the End of the World

_Alexandria, Egypt, 1312 A.D_

The battle raged around Astra as she strode forward in her shining silvery plate armor, part of the army of King Edward, the Christian king of England.  They would be taking Alexandria, and it would be glorious.

“FOR ENGLAND!” a voice cried beside her.

An awfully familiar voice that didn’t belong there.  

She pushed the visor of her helmet up and turned to the warrior next to her.  “Alex?”

The warrior pushed their helmet up.  “Astra!” She grinned. “Good to see you!”

Astra gestured with her broadsword, demanding, “Aren’t you sort of on the wrong side?”

Alex laughed.  “I just want to be where the action is.”  She said this in a suggestive tone and gave Astra a little wink.

Astra grew flustered, stomped her foot, and her chainmail rattled.  “You’re supposed to be fighting _against_ Heaven.”  

“Listen, love, I’m on the side of Hell.  If the Christians aren’t turning Egypt into Hell right now, then I’ve been getting it all wrong.  I mean, honestly! Here you’ve got these lovely people, minding their own business, delicious food, bang-up clothes –I mean honestly, Astra, have you _tried_ Egyptian cotton?– and then Edward’s got to come in all ‘ _look here you lot, you’ve all got to worship my god or else I’m going to kill the whole lot of you,’_ I mean, it’s pretty devilish behavior, really.”

Astra sighed with disgust.  “Well, I can’t very well be fighting on the same side with the likes of you,” she grumbled, and stalked off the battlefield.  She contacted her superiors, who agreed that Alex did indeed have a point, that King Edward’s entire idea was rather a mess, and dispatched her elsewhere.

 

_Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963_

Astra sat on a grassy knoll, eating her lunch and looking at the streets being cleared for the Presidential motorcade.

“Is that a short-rib sandwich?” asked a familiar voice.  “Because I could do with one.”

Astra groaned.  Not her. Anyone but her. “Oh, what are you doing here?”

“Nothing, really. I just like the cut of that Jackie Kennedy’s jib.”  Alex was wearing a ladies’ suit with a little black pillbox hat and those round sunglasses she’d become fond of lately.

“You cannot possibly expect me to believe that. What are you up to?” Astra persisted.

Alex sipped rather deliberately on a waxed paper travel cup with a cardboard straw in it.  It had something red in inside. “Nothing grievous,” she said. “I’m bored, that’s all.” She looked at Astra for a moment. “You know,” she remarked, “this sixties fashion really works well on you.”

Astra tugged at the hem of her sundress.  “Do you think so?”

“Mm, yes.”  She pointed down toward the street.  “Come on, don’t you want to see Kennedy a bit closer than this? Can’t see a damn thing from here.  You’re an angel, anyway, you’re meant to be guarding his sort, aren’t you?”

Astra shrugged, got up from the grass, dusted herself off.  “I suppose. Though he’s a bit questionable, honestly. He’s got a real problem with women.”

Alex humphed.  “Don’t they all.”  

 

_Our Lady of Intestinal Fortitude Hospital, Tadfield, UK, 1998_

Astra was loitering outside the front of Our Lady of Intestinal Fortitude Hospital, waiting for her sign to proceed.  A child with cancer was expected to pass away any moment, and as per the rules, was to receive an angelic escort when she died.  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, leather-bound original edition of Dante’s Inferno, and began reading through some of the better-worn passages.

“That book’s not even remotely accurate,” someone said.

Astra knew the voice by now.  “I do not care, Alex. It is literature.”

Alex snorted. “Dante was nothing but a Virgil fangirl.”

Astra stood up straight.  “Take that back,” she said quietly.

“I will not,” Alex chuckled.

Astra looked up at Alex for the first time, and realized that she was dressed as a nurse.  Fake lanyard and everything. That scrub top was a bit tight around the bosom, Astra thought.  And she was still wearing those bloody sunglasses. “Alex, it is night. You look like an idiot in a nurse’s costume with sunglasses on, walking into that hospital.”  And then: “What are you doing here anyway?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“I will do precisely that, thank you very much, because you are a demon.”

Alex grinned.  “I’m your favorite demon, though.”  She winked at Astra over the tops of her sunglasses.  “Right, angel?”

Astra fumed.  “I am waiting on a dying child, or I would–”

“You’d what?” Alex challenged her.  She stepped a little closer. “Fight me?”

Astra backed up.  “Nasty, troublemaking–”

“Don’t forget lascivious.”

“I was getting to that!  Lascivious demon!”

Alex tugged a lock of Astra’s hair and sauntered inside.  While she waited outside, Alex came strolling back out a few minutes later.

“What did you do?” Astra demanded.

“Ah, just a little favor for you and me,” she replied.  Then she got into her black Aston Martin, which she’d been driving for several decades now, and which was parked by the curb in the No Parking zone.

“You know this parking zone is for emergencies!” Astra yelled at Alex’s back.

“It _was_ an emergency!”  Alex got in the car and drove away.

Astra knew she ought to call her superiors.  Heaven ought to know about it. But just then, her pager buzzed in her pocket and she knew she had to go and escort a child upstairs, and then, well, it just slipped her mind.

 

 

_Ten Years Later_

Astra found herself surrounded by several stacks of very elderly books that would have to be opened by a particularly delicate process involving static electricity and a very tiny set of tweezers that could rearrange time.  She loved her books. Especially the kind that needed some feat of elementary science to even be opened. She loved those even more than the ones that smelled moldy, and the ones that coughed up clouds of dust when you opened them. Ah, literature.  Antiquity. She loved these things.

Her telephone rang, a gurgling bell beside her hand on the desk.  She answered.

“Astra?”

Astra sighed heavily.  A phone call from a demon never meant good news.  She was never calling to say _Hey, guess what, they found a bunch of texts from the library of Alexandria that were previously thought to be destroyed,_ or _Opera is becoming all the rage again._ “Alex?”

“We need to talk about the Apocalypse.”

 

*****************

 

_An Hour Later_

 

Astra had chosen a very nice cafe with tables and umbrellas on the sidewalk and a view of the river.  They served cognac and the kind of fancy brunches that Alex did enjoy after a hard night of drinking, partying, and just generally doing the devil’s work.  Most of the time Alex found Astra’s tastes too much like what she expected an angel to be like. But her tastes were nothing if not expensive, so every once in a while, they happened to intersect.

“Excellent bouillabaisse,” Alex commented.

“It is,” Astra agreed.  “But the vegan steak tartare is better.”

Alex shook her head.  “You know I only started veganism as a joke, don’t you?”  Sometimes she’d whisper the right ideas into the right person’s head, just to entertain herself; the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, for example, or fruit leather, or Justin Bieber.  Those were some of her more famous works. And of course, Veganism. She’d had no idea that it would take off, much less that Astra would start doing it too.

Astra waved dismissively.  “So. You want to talk about the Apocalypse.  You know of course that it _is_ coming,” Astra went on. “That is a fairly major linchpin of the Ineffable Plan.”

Alex snorted. “How can something that’s ineffable have a linchpin?  That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It is a plan, it has a linchpin,” Astra shot back. “All plans have a linchpin, everyone knows that.”

“But,” Alex persisted, “why does it need one?  If it’s ineffable, how does any kind of pin hold it together?”

Astra grew irritated. “It is the plan. He is not going to change it now.”  

Alex sipped her mimosa and leaned over conspiratorially.  “Maybe he doesn’t have to.”

Astra looked confused.  “What are you saying?”

Alex shrugged.  “I’m just saying hypothetically, we could… you know… just… not let certain things go exactly right, and that maybe, we could wreck the entire, you know… plan?”

Astra cleared her throat, and stared at Alex, scandalized.  “Surely you don’t suggest that we–”

Alex nodded.  “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”  

“Alex!” Astra hissed, her eyes darting around.  “You should not joke about that! Interrupt the Apocalypse? Why would you suggest that?”

“Because, Astra.  I like the world. I don’t particularly want it to end.  I like my Aston Martin and my bespoke suits and the Fast and Furious movies–”

“No-one actually likes those movies!” Astra objected.  “Not even you!”

Alex and Astra had known each other for millennia.  Astra had a weakness for humanity that extended to its culture and customs.  She especially loved reading their history books: _“That is  not what happened!” “Oh, I remember that, what a riot.  Literally. There were riots.” “For the love of– everyone knows he was Alexander Hamilton’s boyfriend!”_

“Listen,” Alex persisted , “I’m just saying, imagine.  The big war. It all happens. Maybe you know, you guys even win–”

“Of course we will,” Astra responded as if she were offended that Alex would suggest that Heaven’s victory  was anything but an inevitability.

“Mm, but do you really want that?  I mean, yes, you’re alive for eternity but you’re also stuck in Heaven.  No Earth, no Hell. And I hate to tell you, no jazz concerts and no book shops.”

“No book shops?”

“None.  Heaven has not one. We have all the good jazz musicians too, except for Kenny G.”  

Astra’s face became a good deal more grim as she contemplated eternity with nothing but Kenny G to listen to.

Alex grinned at her.  “So I’ll say it again, are you sure you don’t want to just… screw things up a little?  Just enough?”

“Team up with you? To ruin the Apocalypse?”  Astra seemed to be considering her.

Alex was delighted at the prospect of some real quality time spent irritating Astra.  Oh, she felt the urgency too; she didn’t want to lose her vintage Aston Martin or, quite frankly, the sheer diabolical chaos of human creativity (pet rocks, for example, and waterboarding, those were all human inventions.  Nothing to do with her).

Astra looked at her in consternation.  “Whose side are you on?”

“I’m on _our_ side!” Alex exclaimed.  “I know you love your human comforts and your little suits and I know you watch Harry Potter films even though you pretend not to.  Well, so what. I like life on Earth, too. You don’t want to give it up any more than I do, admit it.”

Astra shifted in her chair, which squeaked under her weight.  “You and I, a team? I do not even like you.”

Alex leaned forward and looked at her over the tops of her sunglasses.  She took Astra’s hand over the table and gave her a wicked grin. “Sure you do, Astra.  This sounds like a great idea. You know you want to do it.”

“This is really against every rule there is,” Astra objected, but she didn’t pull her hand out of Alex’s grasp.  

“Yeah, but you’re really not a very good angel, if you think about it.  You break the rules all the time.”

“Only when I have to in order to accomplish the task that Heaven’s given me!”

Alex nodded.  “So? Maybe just one time, you break the rules for yourself.”  She squeezed Astra’s hand. “I’ve seen signs and portents. I’m sure the Four Horsepersons are already getting dressed.  I don’t expect that we have very much time.”

Astra sighed heavily.  “What exactly did you have in mind?”

Alex looked warily at her.  “Well, it starts with the kid.”

 

*******

 

_Half An Hour Later_

 

“So you see, I thought it’d be alright, but well, I hadn’t counted on puberty and let me tell you, it’s hitting her like a bus.”  Alex finished off the last bite of her perfectly burnt creme brulee.

“Well,” Astra responded archly, “humans are incredibly complex creatures and you’d know that if you actually consulted me before you pulled this nonsense.”  She finished her wine.

“Yeah but if I’d consulted you first, you’d have said no.”

“Precisely!”

“Anyway, I’m a bit concerned that the kid is starting to think something’s up.”

Astra snorted.  “Of course she is!  One can only have a spontaneous eruption of hyper-concentrated light come shooting out of one’s eyes in moments of great distress on so many occasions before one is forced to admit that something is up!”

What was happening was this:  the Antichrist has been born on Earth, in the form of a pretty blond girl. Alex had switched the girl with a perfectly ordinary baby in the same hospital.  So, somewhere, a perfectly unremarkable young woman had been brought up, unfortunately, to believe that she was expected to usher in the Apocalypse when in fact she could not usher in so much as a very unpleasant breeze.  

“If she figures out who she is, we’re done for,” Alex explained.

“Naturally,” Astra agreed.  “What are you proposing we do?”

“We just… hang around a bit. Make sure she doesn’t get too distressed.  Give her good advice and whatnot. Keep her human.”

“Human,” Astra repeated incredulously.

“Yeah.”

“I knew you were up to no good that night in Tadfield.”

“But you didn’t report it.  Now you’re on the hook. We both are.  We keep the girl ignorant, as long as we can.  We stave off the apocalypse. We get to stay here.  Right?”

Astra sighed.  She didn’t suppose she had much choice.

 

*******

 

_Fourteen Years Later_

Alex pulled up to the curb in her black Aston Martin.  She adjusted her little round sunglasses. She checked her reflection one last time.  These sunglasses were very of the moment, the finest to be had in London. Suited her, she thought.  

She rolled down the window and watched the blonde as she exited the office building across the street.  Man, she wished she could tell that kid who she really was.

Today the kid was hurrying along in the wake of her boss, a slender little human whose sense of urgency seemed turned permanently to eleven.  “...Then call Angela Merkel and tell her she needs to call me before Emanuel Macron does or I’m going with his version of the Raclette Incident.”

“Yes, Miss Grant.”

“And move my meeting with Ted Turner to next week, whenever you can fit him in.”

“Of course, Miss Grant.”

“And if my mother calls, tell her I’m faking my own death and living in the South of France.”

“OK, Miss Grant… what?”

The boss stopped, tossed her hair and looked up at the kid in a way that somehow managed to seem like she was looking down. “That was humor, Kiera,” she scolded.  “Keep up.”

She marched up to Alex’s window and knocked on it.  Alex chuckled, knowing of course that Cat Grant had assumed the Aston Martin at the curb was waiting for her, and rolled down the window.  “Yes, ma’am?”

Cat frowned.  “You’re not my usual driver.”

Alex’s grin got wider.  “You’re right. I’m not.”

“This isn’t my usual car, either.  Not that I’m complaining, it’s a nice change of pace–”

Kara came scurrying up behind Cat and peered over her shoulder.  Her mouth dropped open with surprise that looked mostly happy. “Alex!”

“Hey, kid.”  Alex nodded to Cat Grant.  “That’s my little sister, there.  I hope she’s making the cut, ma’am.”

Cat Grant snorted.  “Please, she only does _everything_.”

Kara flushed. Alex mentally noted to herself, she was going to have to do something about the kid’s terrible problem of needing praise from this woman.  Alex nodded, winked at Kara, and gestured with her chin toward the car behind her. “I believe, ma’am, that your car is back there. This here is my personal vehicle.”  She patted the steering wheel affectionately.

Cat gave a sharp little nod and marched off to the car behind her.  

Alex grinned at Kara.  “Sorry, you looked like you could use a minute’s break of her yammering at you.”

Kara grinned back.  “Thanks, Alex.”

“It’s nothing, little sis.”  She gestured back. “Go, catch up with her before she realizes you’re not listening.”  

Kara ran away, trailing after Cat Grant trying to catch everything she was saying.  Alex sighed. In actual fact, Kara was only her “sister” if you sort of squinted and turned your head sideways.  “I’m telling her,” she sighed to No-one in Particular.

“You most certainly are not.”

No-one in Particular, apparently, was sitting in the back seat.  Alex twisted around and saw her sitting there; the stiff, annoyingly formal angel in one of those vaguely Edwardian men’s suits.  Alex hadn’t loved the Edwardian Era. Those high collars had just been a drag, and frankly there had been far too many petticoats. Alex always breathed a sigh of relief when she found herself in an era favorable to women in trousers.

“Hello, Astra,” Alex said, grinning.

Astra frowned at her.  “You are not telling her, Alex.”

“And why not?” Alex demanded.  “Why shouldn’t I? She’s my sister, technically.”  

Alex had been on Earth for a very long time.  She’d been an angel, but that had been a while ago now.  Hell had just seemed like a better match. Honestly, if anyone had asked her opinion about it, she really didn’t feel it was fair that those were her only two choices.  But she’d simply grown bored in heaven. It didn’t have anything she really wanted.

“After how many millennia, and frankly after this particular…. _shenanigan_... suddenly you are concerned about being technical?” Astra inquired coolly.

Alex smirked.  “I can be very technical when it suits me.”  She looked at Astra in the rearview mirror, winking over the tops of her sunglasses.

Astra looked suddenly uncomfortable.  

Alex liked flirting with that poor stuffy angel.  She had no idea what “I can be very technical when it suits me” even meant, but she’d discovered that you could pretty much make anything sound suggestive with the right tone of voice and the right look, and that it literally mattered almost not at all what you were actually saying.

Or maybe it just worked that way for her.

 

******

 

Astra had once lived in a modest little cottage in Sussex for several years straight, and there was a grey squirrel who lived in the tree in the yard.  Next door was a beagle who came parading onto the property to chase the squirrel each day at around four o’clock. At some point, as the dog and the squirrel got older, they became accustomed to this ritual and a queer thing happened; Astra noticed that the beagle wasn’t running quite as hard as it could, and that the squirrel wasn’t trying to escape with quite the same urgency.

Her relationship with Alex could be described in much the same way.

Astra knew perfectly well Alex had no intention of revealing the girl’s identity to her and triggering the End of Everything.  But she’d still muse out loud about it sometimes, just to goad Astra into turning up to yell at her not to do it.

Meanwhile, Kara, the proper Antichrist, was being raised by a pair of lovely, socially awkward molecular biologists who were, of course, atheists.  If one was trying to keep the girl from learning about the circumstances of her birth, it would have been impossible to choose a better family. They raised the spawn of Satan to be the sort of pleasant young lady who held the door for people at the market and only brought donuts to work if she was going to bring enough for everyone.  Astra didn’t want to admit it but a good deal of her tendency to pop up and dispense helpful advice wasn’t to keep the girl from fulfilling her destiny, but simply because she liked her and wanted her to do well.

That was why, after all, Astra had spent the intervening years hovering just at the edge of the girl’s life, just as Alex had, trying to give guidance where she could.  It was clear now to Astra that this had been Alex’s plan for the last two and a half decades. The girl literally had a demon on one shoulder and angel on the other, and effectively, it was keeping her more or less human.  When she would occasionally exhibit some unexpected burst of superhuman power, Astra or Alex would appear to reassure her that she was really quite normal, that what she thought had happened had not in fact happened, and that she had best get back to humaning before someone noticed she was missing.

Once, in the midst of all this, she telephoned Alex.  “This was always your plan,” she accused.

“So what?” Alex answered.  “I knew you’d come around.”

 

******

 

_Ten Years Later_

 

“Heaven’s a bit upset,” Astra sighed.

Alex nodded.  “Hell’s none too pleased either.”

“I thought they’d be happy about not having to have the war but apparently it’s really not very good news at all.”

“Yeah.  There’s been talk about the big guy coming up.  You know, from … down below.” Alex sighed, rubbed her fingers over the short part of her extremely fashionable undercut, and looked at Astra.  “What do you think, is your man going to come down?”

“My man?”  Astra looked at her skeptically.  “Surely you don’t mean Him Who Is Called I Am.”

Alex sighed irritably.  “Yes, that’s who I mean, and you know, for a deity, he’s got a pretty tenuous grip of grammar.”

Astra tossed her chin.  “I have told you before, that is just an oddity of the translation from Aramaic, there is no need to be so difficult about it.”

Alex leaned forward across the table, and looked Astra dead in the eye.  “Do you think,” she asked slowly and with emphasis, “he’s going to come down?”

Astra sighed.  “Possible. Not likely, but possible.  Don’t know, really. They’ve not told me, yet.”

It had finally happened.  Hell had grown impatient and begun moving things into place, only to discover that their duly designated Antichrist was not manifesting any of the sort of world-destroying superhuman powers that she was supposed to be. After some time, they figured out that the child (who was now in her thirties) was not the proper child, and due to a clerical error at the hospital, the proper Antichrist had most likely been sent to some other family.

Alex sighed.  “There were only so many girl babies born that night.  It won’t take them long to find her.” She pressed her hands to her temples. “I’m doomed. They’ll find me out. Do you know what Satan does to wayward demons?”

Astra, despite herself, found the thought of Alex being given a full-blown Hellish Torture rather unbearable. She waved for the check, and paid it with cash.  “Alex, trust me, Heaven will not be pleased with me when they find out my role in this either.”

Alex nodded quietly.  “How long do you reckon we’ve got?”

Astra thought.  “A few days, at best.”

A little smirk played around Alex’s mouth. “Come on. I know just what we ought to be doing before the world ends.”

 

********

 

_An Hour Later_

 

Astra gazed up at the London Eye.  “Honestly?”

“Come on. I’ve never been.”

Alex dragged the recalcitrant angel into line, presented their tickets, and were herded into one of the little enclosed cars.  They very slowly began their ascent, London spreading out below them a piece at a time as they rose, bit by bit. She took out a flask and uncapped it.  “Want some?”

“What is it?”

“Does it matter now?”

Astra shrugged.  “I suppose not.”

She took a sip from it.  It tasted like bourbon. Rather good bourbon. She took a few more sips and then passed it back.  “Not bad,” she allowed.

“Better than not bad,” Alex scolded, “it’s top shelf, real Kentucky bourbon. They don’t make it like that anywhere else.  And very soon, they won’t make it there either.”

They got quiet.  The stars began pricking the sky as their little glass and metal egg inched ever upwards. “You know,” Astra began after a long moment of brooding, “you do frustrate me enormously.”

Alex started to take a breath to come back with a witty rejoinder, but Astra put up a hand to stop her.

“But,” she continued, “you’ve bought us a few extra decades on this planet. So, I suppose I ought to thank you.”

Alex looked stunned.

“And,” she added awkwardly, “you’ve not been… entirely terrible to spend time with.”

Astra had never spoken an affectionate word in all the time they’d known each other, which was quite a lot of years by now. This was the closest she’d ever come.  Alex nodded. “Same for you, you stuffy, self-righteous angel. I rather like you, actually. Matter of fact, I’d go so far as to say…” She trailed off.

Astra didn’t know what that look was in her eye.  It wasn’t the naughty, suggestive look that made her blush and shift uncomfortably.  It was something else. It was something that Astra supposed you saw in a girl’s eye when you were drinking bourbon in a ferris wheel car that hovered over the rooftops of London while the city sparkled in its jewel-like repose. It was a look that Astra supposed you saw right before a woman was about to kiss you.

 

********

 

_Three Hours Later_

 

Alex lay flopped out on her back, her black wings stretched out to either side.  The bedroom in her flat was filled with the sweet crooning of Billie Holliday on repeat, and the scent of good incense and still more bourbon, and skin and sweat and feathers.

Astra lay on top of her, white wings draped over her black ones, looking decidedly more relaxed than Alex could recall having seen her.

“Always wanted to try that,” the angel sighed.

Alex raised an eyebrow.  “Never did?”

“I’m an angel.”

“Yes, but you’re not a very good one.”

Astra gave her a playful wounded look.  “Well you’re not a very good demon, you know.  Stalling the Apocalypse just so you can get in another Fast and Furious movie before the whole thing goes to pot.”

“I’m a perfectly good demon,” Alex rejoined. “A proper troublemaker if there ever was one.”

Alex took a deep breath, and released it slowly.  It felt good to uncase her wings. She’d had to be so awfully careful about that ever since around the thirteenth century or so. Humans were so twitchy about those sorts of things.

Astra kissed her, and Alex had to admit that having an angelic lover had some real benefits. Whatever Astra lacked in technique, her kisses and her lovemaking filled Alex with a radiant benevolence that she’d forgotten a long time ago.  

She reached into her bedside drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Astra wrinkled her nose.  “Ugh, really?”

Alex shrugged. “It’s not like it’ll kill me.”  She lit one. It smelled of cloves. She gave Astra a disapproving look.  “Did you change this to a clove cigarette?”

“At least it smells good now.”  As Alex blew curls of lazy smoke into shapes in the air above her, Astra felt about for the remote control.

“What do you suppose is going on out there?” Alex wondered, becoming aware for the first time that she heard sirens wailing around London. She blew some smoke up and in manifested in the shape of the members of One Direction.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”  

She found it, flicked on the television news, and saw a city rising up from the middle of the ocean.

“Oh, this is a stupid movie,” Alex grumbled.

“Not a movie,” Astra said after a moment of squinting at the television, re-reading the news crawl and hoping it would change. It didn’t. “That’s Atlantis.”

The glass towers sparkled wetly in the sun. Alex swore under her breath in seven different languages.

“Didn’t know you spoke Farsi, that’s a point for you,” Astra muttered, not taking her eyes off the screen.

A knocking came at the flat's door.  Alex frowned. Who the hell could be bothering her now, of all times?  She got up and sauntered out into the living room, her feathered wings rustling behind her.  

“Alex,” Astra called after her.

“Yeah, I know, the wings, I don’t care,” Alex called back.

“Not that,” Astra was saying.

Alex flung the apartment door open.  It was Kara. Her mouth dropped open.  

“You’re naked.”

Alex looked down. “Yeah.  Right. Sorry about that. Come on in, then.”  She wrapped her wings around herself and went back inside. “Have a seat, I’ll be right back, yeah?”

“Also,” Kara called after her, “you have, um, wings?”

“We’ll get to that.”

 

*******

 

Astra had scrambled into some sweatpants (not hers) and a tank top and after brief consideration, decided to leave her wings out as well.  No point hiding anything now.

Kara looked at her.  “Astra?” She glanced toward the bedroom door where Alex had disappeared to get herself dressed.  “You two know each other?”

Astra nodded. “For quite a long time, actually.”

Kara cleared her throat and adjusted her tidy little collar.  “Well, alright, then. Would have been nice to know. Also, um…”  She frowned. “What’s with the wings?”

Alex came strolling out in some jogging shorts and a Hozier t-shirt, wings bobbing along behind her.  “Yeah, we’ll get to that, but, um. What’d you want?”

Kara snorted.  “I came because there’s a lot of weird stuff going on, and I kept thinking about these crazy things that have happened to me and how you always told me it was something else, but now I don’t believe you and I want to know.  What’s going on? Why is Atlantis popping out of the sea? Why are there whole military installations just disappearing off the map like they were never there? How come a war is breaking out in Switzerland?? And WHY WAS I ABLE TO RIP THE DOOR OFF MY DAD’S LORRY ON THE WAY OVER HERE????”

Alex sighed and looked over at Astra. “Well, we have to tell her now, don’t we?”

“I suppose.”

Astra sat down beside Kara on the living room couch.  “This, Kara, what’s happening right now, is the beginnings of the Apocalypse.”

“I knew it!” Kara shouted. “I told Mum and Dad they were wrong about there being no god and stuff!”  She looked at Astra. “So you’re an angel.”

Astra nodded.

She looked at Alex.  “And you’re an angel?”

Alex smirked. “Well, more of a fallen angel. Or if you prefer, a temporarily embarrassed angel pulling herself up by her Bruno Maglis.”

Kara stood up and stomped her foot.  “And what am I? And don’t give me some cockamamie nonsense about stress hallucinations, weather balloons, or gas leaks!”  

Alex sighed.  “You, Kara, my little sis, are the Antichrist.”

Kara put her hands on her hips.  “No.”

Astra nodded.  “You are. You are, in fact, the spawn of Satan, sent here to usher in the End Times.”

Kara stomped her foot.  “Well, I won’t do it.”

Alex and Astra looked at each other.  It hadn’t occurred to Alex that this was even an option.  “Well, I mean, it’s sort of your destiny and whatnot…”

Kara shook her head.  She raised her chin with that determined look Alex had seen on her many times. “I don’t care. If God gave man free will, then the Devil has to believe in free will, too.  I won’t do it.”

Astra tilted her head to the side and peered at her.  “How do you even know that?”

Kara threw her shoulders back.  “Well, I went to a Jesuit uni, didn’t I.  A term each of Theology and Philosophy are required.”

Astra and Alex looked at each other again, and then back at Kara. “You, er, you just… won’t?”

“I like it here,” Kara declared, “and I like most humans, except the ones that are rude or mean or start wars and whatnot, and I like Indian food and doughnuts and romcoms and I’m not going to just get up and start the end of the world because some goaty old man with horns and pitchfork says I’ve got to.  He’s not my dad! Jeremiah Danvers is my dad! Satan didn’t take me to a single ballet class in his life, or a single therapy appointment, or come to a single school commencement, or anything! I don’t have to listen to anything he says!”

Alex didn’t want to raise the rather pedantic detail that the pitchfork and horns bit was really all wrong, and that Satan was actually a rather stylish Englishman with very nice manners who wouldn’t be caught dead holding a pitchfork and actually rather hated goats.  They’d get to it later.

“Er, well… so…” Alex began.  “I mean, there’s… there’s a war in Switzerland, and um, other things happening.”

Kara shook her head.  “What powers have I got?”

Alex shrugged.  “Ah, you know. All of them?  Laser eyes, bulletproof skin, impervious to temperature, freezy breath, flight, you know.  The usual stuff for a deity at your level.”

The room became very quiet for a moment as the sirens outside became louder. It sounded as if wild things were afoot in London as well.  

“Right,” Kara said, “well, I’m going to go out there and get all this sorted.  And then you two are going to explain to me how you know each other and why you’ve been keeping it secret from me that you’ve been snogging.”

She marched out.

 

*****

 

Alex and Astra faced each other awkwardly.  They’d sort of let themselves go to bed with one another predicated on the notion that the world was going to be ending and that they were both going to be tortured or destroyed, or possibly tortured and then destroyed.  

“It never occurred to you even once,” Astra said slowly, “that the girl could simply refuse to participate in her destiny? That she could exercise free will?”

“Well,” Alex said crossly, “it’s not as if you thought of it either.”

They stood there, shuffling their bare feet on the carpet.

“So, do you really think she can get it all sorted?” Alex wondered aloud.

Astra shrugged. “We are beyond the realm of possibility at this point. I have no idea.”

“I do rather want to be there if she throat-punches God, though,” Alex mused.

Astra snorted. “Well. The way I see it, either she goes out there, and fulfills her destiny, and we’re knobbed. Or, she goes out there, and gets it all sorted, and we’re probably still knobbed, because we're both going to be in a whole lot of trouble with our respective sides.  And either way, you’re not a very good demon, and I’m not a very good angel, and I’m not sure we can be very much help to her.”

Alex nodded.  They looked at each other for a few more long, awkward moments. Astra was inordinately distracted by the way Alex’s tee-shirt drooped to one side and displayed the edge of one collarbone.

“So,” Alex said breezily after a moment, “back to bed then?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

 

********

 

After two more hours of shagging, they lay together, tangled up, waiting for the world to end.

Astra’s phone rang.  It was the Metatron, the Voice of God.  He always used a blocked number. She picked it up.  “Er, hello?”

“Astra,” his serene, mellifluous voice demanded, “where are you?”

“Er, in London?”

“The Antichrist has made her appearance. And she is acting… strangely.”

“Er, strangely, how so?”  Alex looked inquisitive. Astra pointed to the phone and silently mouthed, _Metatron_.

“She has pre-empted the fighting in Switzerland and then singlehandedly repaired the dam that was expected to break and flood in Malaysia.”  

“Well, er… that is… that is good, is it not?”

“No,” the Metatron explained patiently. “The war cannot happen if she is going about wantonly reversing signs and portents.”

“Well, respectfully, er, what am I meant to do about it?”

“Go and remind her of her destiny, before it is too late.”

“I…”

“And bring that demon in the bed with you. She has a reliable conveyance.”

Astra winced.

“We are going to have to discuss that later, Astra.”

“Yes, of course.”  She hung up the phone, hands shaking, breath short.

“So I got the text from HQ myself,” Alex announced, “whilst you were chatting with Megatron–”

“Metatron.”

“And anyway, I’m to take you to the Tadfield Military Base where Kara is apparently preventing some nuclear bombs from being set off.”

Astra sighed. “Are we going, then?”

Alex sighed back.  “Don’t think we have a choice, really.”

Astra leaned forward impulsively, and kissed Alex on her beautiful, smirking, infuriatingly gorgeous mouth. "You did not want the world to end because you wanted more time with me, admit it," she whispered.

"Guilty," Alex whispered back.

“It was fun,” Astra sighed, “pretending that we had free will for a while, wasn’t it.”

Alex nodded. 

They would pretend for as long as they could.

 

*******

 

From the Lost Book of Kara, added to the Catholic Bible in 2018 and then mysteriously removed a year later:

 

 

> _And the Angel of the Lord arrived at the appointed place, with the Demon at her side.  The Metatron asked the Angel, “Where is your flaming sword” and the Angel replied, “I’m afraid I lent it to a friend, I really didn’t know I was going to need it this week,” and the Metatron replied, “Fine, just get on with it, we haven’t got all eternity you know.”_
> 
> _And thus, the Angel of the Lord and the Demon entered the appointed place, where the Adversary awaited. The Adversary laid eyes upon the Angel and the Demon and spoke unto them: “Hey, what are you guys doing here, I thought you were waiting this one out at Alex’s flat?”_
> 
> _And the Angel of the Lord said unto her, “We didn’t really want to be here, we’re supposed to get you to do your whole Antichrist thing because honestly, Heaven and Hell are both quite upset with us for having put you off it.”_
> 
> _And then the Adversary saw the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and with her eyes aflame, she turned them to ash. And the Demon said unto her, “That was cool.”_
> 
> _And thus, the Adversary, who was really poorly named because she was actually a very lovely young lady, refused to end the world.  The earth opened, with the sound of trumpets and a mighty cracking, and from the dust and sulphur emerged the form of Satan, the Deceiver, the Father of Lies, and he said unto his daughter, “Would it kill you for once to do what I want you to do?” and she said unto him, “You’re not really interested in me as a person, are you, Dad.”_
> 
> _And thereupon, she challenged him to an arm-wrestling match, in which her victory meant that she did not have to bring about the End Times. And her father agreed to the bargain._
> 
> _And the Devil was mighty, but his daughter was mightier, and she pinned his arm down for the required three seconds before releasing it._
> 
> _“Back to Hell with you, then,” she said unto her father, and the earth closed up and swallowed him into itself._
> 
> _And Heaven, in its vast disappointment with the Angel of the Lord, stripped her of immortality and banished her to a mortal life on Earth._
> 
> _Hell, in its vast disappointment with the Demon, did the same._
> 
> _The Earth, still teeming with mortals, many of them good, many of them stupid, continued to spin around the flaming sun._
> 
> _The Antichrist went on to a spectacular career in journalism as a war correspondent._
> 
> _The great tragedy of that day was a woman named Siobhan Smythe of Tadfield who had got sucked into a giant gaping sinkhole in the ground whilst trying to summon Satan out of it._
> 
> _And the Angel and the Demon lived a slightly peculiar but largely pleasant human life together until they died._
> 
>  
> 
> _What happened after that is another story._
> 
>  

 


End file.
